As Indians fans, and Cleveland sports fans in general, we’ve seen more than our fair share of losing. But just when it seems as though our teams have lost in every imaginable fashion, they find new ways to break our hearts.

The Indians are in the midst of one of the worst stretches of baseball in franchise history – and that’s not something to be taken lightly. Let’s detail their current situation….

  • By getting swept by the Twins, Royals and Tigers, the 2012 Indians became the first team in franchise history to go winless on a road trip of at least nine games.
  • They became the first team in franchise history to lose nine consecutive games, all to division opponents (since divisional play began in 1969).
  • And to wrap up the miserable road trip, they blew their first three-run lead in extra innings since April 19, 1977 when Brooks Robinson capped off a four-run bottom of the 10th in Baltimore with a walk-off home run off All-Star close Dave LaRoche.
  • The Indians are now the proud owners of the third-worst record in the American League and are closer to the last-place Royals than the second-place Tigers.

In hind sight, we should have seen this coming. The Indians played above their heads in the first half of the season. Despite inconsistent offense and downright horrendous starting pitching, they managed to float above .500 for much of the first half. As we entered the second half of the year, there were only two real possibilities. Either everything finally clicked and they surged up the standings, or reality would catch up to them and they would come crashing back to earth. Clearly, the latter has occurred.

A few other notes on the Tribe…

  • Chris Seddon made his first start as a member of the Indians on Sunday and his first major league start since 2007. He was a 5th round pick of the Devil Rays in 2001 and was selected one slot ahead of Ryan Howard and two ahead of C.J. Wilson.
  • Miguel Cabrera’s walk-off home run was his second against the Indians. He’s just the 5th player with multiple walk-off home runs against the Tribe since 1990, joining David Ortiz, Adam Dunn, Tim Salmon and A.J. Pierzynski.
  • Ezequiel Carrera is 7-12 since being called up prior to the series opener against Detroit and recorded at least two hits in all three games. Since 1918 (as far back as the baseball-reference database goes) no other Indians mid-season call up (June or later) has ever started his big-league season off with three straight multi-hit games.

Follow Ryan on Twitter @TribeFanMcC

3 Comments

  • Mary Jo says:

    First of all, the Tribe and Tigers have the same numbers: 58 and 50. You, unfortunately, have to read them reversed for the Tribe record.

    Second, good news. Watched Curiosity land on the surface of Mars about an hour ago. Freakin’ MARS! Pictures came back in about a minute; Curiosity should be transmitting her own photos tomorrow (today). When you figure how awesome that is, baseball is just *pfftttt*. And I love baseball. But NASA and JPL ROCK!

  • DaveR says:

    Mary Jo, I echo those sentiments! Great job by all involved.

    Not much to say about Indians baseball. I kindof wonder why they didn’t trade high for Perez. It’s not a knee-jerk to last night but the Indians have a good enough bullpen to fill in for him, he has good value now (under contract for years and top 10 closer), and the Indians could have filled some holes for next season.

  • Jeff says:

    You have to wonder how many other young guys down at Columbus/Akron could come up and very effectively replace some of the dead weight in the lineup right now, like Carrera has. Goedert and others from Columbus, Neal from Akron, etc. I’d rather lose with youngsters than lose with Duncan, Kotchman, Lopez, Hannahan, and the rest of the mediocre vets.

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